BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) In most places, the days of a firefighter getting a cat out of a tree are long gone. It's true here, too, though an exception was made when the number of stranded felines added up to five.
Battalion Chief Tom Bergstrom agreed to respond to the plea of a woman whose pet had a litter of kittens in the crook of a branch some 40 feet off the ground. The woman called a veterinarian for advice, and he told her the tiny newborns might not survive the nighttime cold. Even if they did withstand the elements, the pet doctor said, the babies - with their eyes still closed - would probably fall out of the tree once they became mobile.
The woman had tried everything else and it was getting dark. Bergstrom decided firefighters would come to the rescue with an aerial ladder.
The mother cat, Bergstrom said, wasn't too happy that anyone had touched her babies but was calmer when the whole family was safely on the ground.